Appalled at the message,
the man went away, distressed: He had many possessions. Jesus, having looked round, told his students,“What a hassle those who have possessions will have in entering God’s Kingdom!” This teaching astounded the students. In reply, Jesus again told them,
“Kids, what a hassle it is to enter God’s Kingdom period . Get a wealthy person into God’s Kingdom? It’s easier to get a camel through a needle’s hole.”They were even more astounded, telling themselves, “Who’s able to be saved?” Jesus looked them in the face and said,
“An impossible thing for a person, but not for God. Everything ’s possible for God.”
Last week, I discussed how a man with many possessions realized he couldn’t give up his possessions for the Kingdom. Jesus was too radical for him. Now Jesus makes it clear the Kingdom is too radical for everybody.
Wealth and the Kingdom.
The United States is a wealthy nation. Problem is, a lot of wealthy Americans don’t recognize how wealthy we are. We compare our wealth to that of other people, and figure they’re wealthy—but not us. Billionaires are rich. Hundred-thousandaires are… well, comfortable. But not rich. Not billionaire-rich.
Well, Jesus’s definition doesn’t cut things off at dollar amounts. He equates “those who have possessions” (10.23) with “a wealthy person”. (10.25) It’s not the monetary value of your stuff. It’s the fact you even have stuff. If you don’t live hand-to-mouth, you aren’t poor: You have wealth. Maybe not a lot of wealth, but enough to make you comfortable. For some people, it doesn’t take a lot. And its this comfort which interferes with the Kingdom—because it’s this comfort people put their hope and trust in, rather than God.
This was a new idea for Jesus’s students. They’d grown up believing comfort and wealth was from God: It was a sign of his blessing. It even appears to say so in the bible.
For your god, the LORD,
is putting you in a good land:
A land of streams, springs of water,
and deep
aquifers coming out of the valleys and hills.A land of wheat, barley, vines, figs, pomegranates;
a land of olive oil and honey.
A land which isn’t short of bread!
There’s no lack anywhere.
A land whose stones are like iron,
in whose hills you can mine bronze.
You’ll eat; you’ll be full.
So bless your god, the LORD,
for the good land which he gives you.
—Moses, Deuteronomy 8.7-10 KWL
But while the Jews focused on all the blessings wealth was meant to represent, they forgot the flip side, which Moses warned them about, and Jesus bore in mind.
Watch yourselves, lest you forget your god, the LORD,
failing to watch his commands, rulings, and limits
which I charge you with today.
Otherwise
when you eat and are full,you build good houses and live
in them ,your cattle and sheep are many,
silver and gold come to you,
all that’s yours is great,
and your hearts are high,
you forget your god, the LORD,
the One who got you out of Egypt’s land,
from the house of slavery.
He walked you through the great, fearful wasteland,
with burning snakes, scorpions, deserts with no water.
He brought you water out of solid rock.
In the wasteland he fed you mana
—your ancestors never knew of it—
to make you disciplined, to test you,
to get you ready for your future.
You say in your heart, “My ability,
the might of my hand,
they made this wealth for me”—
Remember your god, the LORD:
He gave you the ability to make wealth,
so you can uphold his covenant
which he swore to your ancestors like
he does today.—Moses, Deuteronomy 8.11-18 KWL
Like Moses said at 8.18, God gives us wealth so we can do his will. Not as our reward for doing it. Riches may be a blessing, but they absolutely aren’t God’s endorsement. They only mean we’ve been given the ability to do as God wants—and it’s up to us whether we’ll actually do it, or whether we’ll bask in the wealth, give ourselves all the credit for it (and conversely blame the poor for their lack of wealth), and ignore God.
For some folks, this means the best thing for us is to get rid of the wealth, and go back to the hand-to-mouth existence the Hebrews had in the desert when they had nothing to eat but mana. God put them through that, as Moses said, to get them ready for prosperity: If they could be disciplined enough to collect their liter of mana each day (and two liters on Friday, ’cause no collecting on Sabbath) and eat no more nor less lest it go bad, they’d be prepared to have a homeland and not blow through all their resources like a lottery winner. A lot of rich people—especially those who inherited it, married into it, or lucked their way into it—really can’t handle riches, and it ruins their lives. They most of all need to live on a budget, and give up their wealth (preferably through charity) for the sake of their own souls.
But this thinking utterly flies in the face of our culture, which worships wealth and can’t imagine why someone who has it would shun it.
A camel through a needle.
Jesus compared getting a rich person into the Kingdom like getting
But some commentators point to the side door of Middle Eastern city gates, and point out how these are called “the eye of the needle.” Before modern times, once the gates were closed at night, the only way to get into a city was through this door. If you really wanted to get a camel through it, you could: Strip off everything it carried, have it kneel down, and push it through. It wouldn’t be easy. But it wasn’t impossible.
Well, it wasn’t called that in Jesus’s day. It wasn’t called that till the Middle Ages, during the crusades. Somebody must’ve tried to stuff a camel through one such door, compared it with Jesus’s hyperbole of “the eye of a needle,” and the name stuck. Over time, people began to believe that’s what Jesus was talking about. An Israeli tour guide even told me that story, and you’d think he’d know better. But if that were true, Jesus’s students wouldn’t have responded to his statement with a stunned, “Who’s able to be saved?” (10.26) They didn’t react as if Jesus told them, “Salvation is like putting a camel through a two-meter hole.” They reacted as if Jesus told them, “Salvation is like putting a camel through a two-millimeter hole.” And Jesus didn’t follow up with, “A difficult thing for a person,” but “An impossible thing for a person.” The word he used was a-dýnaton/“not doable.” Unlike a camel through a door.
Can God save the wealthy? Of course he can. He does the impossible all the time. But he doesn’t do the impossible in every circumstance. Most of the time, things follow the laws of nature. In the same way, most of the time wealthy people cling too tightly to their wealth. They don’t value the Kingdom more; they won’t give it up. They try instead to have it all. They’ve been taught they can have it all. Though Jesus said we can’t serve both God and money, they’re pretty sure they can. They just have to make it look like they’re serving God, and not their money: They just have to be “good stewards of God’s money.” Problem is, they may be fooling themselves and their fellow Christians, but they’re not fooling God.
As I said last week, he may have to mercifully take their wealth away… because better that than being shut out of the Kingdom. And that’ll be a lot harder than if we voluntarily give it up. Either way, it’ll be a hassle… but it’s precisely like Jesus said,